WHY CANT A GOLDFISH LONG FOR ITS MOTHER Architectural

BRITISH HCI GROUP ONE-DAY MEETING
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
AFFECTIVE COMPUTING: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN HCI
10th April 1999
WHY CAN’T A GOLDFISH LONG
FOR ITS MOTHER?
Architectural prerequisites
for various types of emotions.
A ARON S LOMAN
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/˜axs/
A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk
Ideas developed
in collaboration with
Steve Allen, Luc Beaudoin,
Brian Logan, Riccardo Poli,
Ian Wright,
and others in the
C OGNITION AND A FFECT P ROJECT
S CHOOL OF C OMPUTER S CIENCE
T HE U NIVERSITY OF B IRMINGHAM
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WHY CAN’T A GOLDFISH
LONG FOR ITS MOTHER?
Because it cannot make its mouth droop?
Because it lacks tear glands to make it weep?
Because it cannot sigh....?
Because it lacks our proprioceptive feedback...??
No, because:
1. it lacks the appropriate information processing
architecture
2. including representational mechanisms, concepts
and knowledge.
2
WHAT KIND OF MACHINE
CAN HAVE EMOTIONS?
PROBLEM:
Umpteen different deﬁnitions of “emotion”.
in psychology, philosophy, neuroscience . . .
REPHRASE:
What are the architectural requirements
for human-like mental states and processes?
(Never mind the deﬁnitions)
I.e. collect examples of many types of real phenomena.
Try to build a theory which explains them all!
Subject to constraints from neuroscience, psychology, biological
evolution, feasibility, tractability, etc.
ALLOW FOR VARIATION:
Across species,
Within species,
Within an individual during normal development
After brain damage
Across planets (grieving, infatuated, Martians?)
Across the natural/artiﬁcial divide
PAY LEAST ATTENTION TO EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
(Shallow vs Deep science)
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Which human-like states and processes?
Which real phenomena?
Consider the following cases:
¡
YOU ARE :
startled by a loud noise,
frozen in terror as boulder crashes towards you,
nauseated by a horrible smell
¡
YOU ARE :
afraid the bridge you are crossing may give way
relieved that you got to the far side safely
afraid the bridge your child is crossing may give way
worried about what to say during your interview
undecided whether to cancel your holiday in ...
¡
YOU ARE :
infatuated with someone you met recently,
overwhelmed with grief,
riddled with guilt about betraying a friend
full of excited anticipation of a loved one’s return
full of longing for your mother,
basking in a warm glow of pride after winning an election.
I’ll describe different architectural underpinnings for
P RIMARY EMOTIONS
S ECONDARY EMOTIONS (central and peripheral)
T ERTIARY EMOTIONS (with and without peripheral effects)
All have many variants, there’s no time to discuss.
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WHAT SORT OF ARCHITECTURE
CAN ACCOUNT FOR
SUCH PHENOMENA?
COULD IT BE AN UNINTELLIGIBLE
MESS?
Yes, in principle.
However, it can be argued that evolution could
not have produced a totally non-modular yet highly
functional brain.
(Compare Nilsson, and Wittgenstein on ‘sawdust’)
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TOWARDS A UNIFYING MODULAR
THEORY OF BRAIN AND MIND:
A BIRD’S EYE VIEW
One perspective:
T HE “ TRIPLE PILLAR ” MODEL
CENTRAL
PERCEPTION PROCESSING ACTION
(many variants)
(Nilsson, Albus)
M ODULAR does not mean RIGID or INNATE
Systems can be “nearly decomposable”. Boundaries
can change with learning and development.
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SENSING AND ACTING
CAN BE
ARBITRARILY SOPHISTICATED
¡
On simple models sensors and motors are mere
transducers.
¡
More realistically, they can have sophisticated
information processing architectures.
E.g. perception and action can be hierarchically organised
with concurrent interacting sub-systems.
¡
Perception goes far beyond segmenting, recognising,
describing what is “out there”. It includes:
¡
providing information about affordances
(Gibson, not Marr),
¡
directly triggering physiological reactions
(e.g. posture control, sexual responses)
¡
evaluating what is detected,
¡
triggering new motivations
¡
triggering “alarm” mechanisms
¡
.....
A N EXTENSION OF G IBSON ’ S THEORY:
Different sub-systems use different affordances, and different
ontologies. (Evidence from brain damage.)
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ANOTHER COMMON
ARCHITECTURAL PARTITION
(functional, evolutionary)
T HE “ TRIPLE LAYER ” MODEL
Meta-management
(reflective processes)
(newest)
Deliberative reasoning
("what if" mechanisms)
(older)
Reactive mechanisms
(oldest)
(many variants – especially third layer)
Reactive systems can be highly parallel, very fast, and
use analog circuits.
Deliberative mechanisms are inherently slow, serial,
knowledge-based, resource limited.
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COMBINING THE VIEWS:
LAYERS + PILLARS = GRID
A grid of co-evolving sub-organisms,
each contributing to the niches
of the others.
CENTRAL
PERCEPTION PROCESSING ACTION
Meta-management
(reflective processes)
(newest)
Deliberative reasoning
("what if" mechanisms)
(older)
Reactive mechanisms
(oldest)
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As processing grows more sophisticated, so it can
be come slower, to the point of danger.
FAST, POWERFUL,
“GLOBAL ALARM SYSTEM”
NEEDED
I T WILL INEVITABLY BE STUPID !
CENTRAL
PERCEPTION PROCESSING ACTION
Meta-management
Deliberative reasoning
ALARMS
Reactive mechanisms
M ANY VARIANTS POSSIBLE .
E.g. one alarm system or several?
(Brain stem, limbic system, ...???)
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ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS
(No time to discuss)
CENTRAL EXTRA
PERCEPTION PROCESSING ACTION
MECHANISMS
Meta-management personae
standards
attitudes
Deliberative reasoning
formalisms
categories
LTM
motives
Reactive mechanisms moods
filters
skill-
compiler
M ANY PROFOUND IMPLICATIONS
e.g. for kinds of development
kinds of perceptual processes
kinds of brain damage
kinds of emotions
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NOT ALL PARTS OF THE GRID
ARE PRESENT IN ALL ANIMALS
How to design an insect?
perception action
REACTIVE PROCESSES
THE ENVIRONMENT
Add a deliberative layer, e.g. for a monkey?
perception action
DELIBERATIVE PROCESSES
Long
(Planning, deciding, term
scheduling, etc.) memory
Motive
activation
REACTIVE PROCESSES
THE ENVIRONMENT
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THESE LAYERS EXPLAIN
PRIMARY, SECONDARY, TERTIARY EMOTIONS
Different architectural layers support
different sorts of emotions,
and help us deﬁne
AN ARCHITECTURE - BASED
ONTOLOGY OF MIND
Different animals will have different mental ontologies
Humans at different stages of development will have different
mental ontologies
The REACTIVE layer with GLOBAL ALARMS supports “primary”
emotions:
¡
being startled
¡
being disgusted by horrible sights and smells
¡
being terriﬁed by large fast-approaching objects?
¡
sexual arousal? Aesthetic arousal ?
etc. etc.
The DELIBERATIVE layer enables “secondary” emotions
(cognitively based):
¡
being anxious about possible futures
¡
being frustrated by failure
¡
excitement at anticipated success
¡
being relieved at avoiding danger
¡
being relieved or pleasantly surprised by success
etc. etc.
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THE THIRD LAYER
enables
SELF-MONITORING,
SELF-EVALUATION
and
SELF-CONTROL
A ND THEREFORE ALSO LOSS OF
CONTROL ( PERTURBANCE )
(and qualia!)
This makes possible “tertiary” emotions,
through having and losing control of thoughts
and attention:
¡
Feeling overwhelmed with shame
¡
Feeling humiliated
¡
Aspects of grief, anger, excited anticipation, pride,
¡
Being infatuated, besotted
and many more typically HUMAN emotions.
NOTES:
1. Different aspects of love, hate, jealousy, pride,
ambition, embarrassment, grief, infatuation can be found
in all three categories.
2. Remember that these are not STATIC states but
DEVELOPING processes, with very varied aetiology.
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SOCIALLY IMPORTANT
HUMAN EMOTIONS
INVOLVE RICH CONCEPTS
AND KNOWLEDGE
and
RICH CONTROL MECHANISMS
(architectures)
Our everyday attributions of emotions, moods,
attitudes, desires, and other affective states implicitly
presuppose that people are information processors.
To long for something you need to know of its
existence, its remoteness, and the possibility of being
together again.
Besides these semantic information states, longing
also involves control states.
O NE WHO HAS DEEP LONGING FOR X DOES NOT MERELY
OCCASIONALLY THINK IT WOULD BE WONDERFUL TO BE
WITHX. I N DEEP LONGING THOUGHTS ARE OFTEN
uncontrollably DRAWN TO X.
Physiological processes (outside the brain) may or
may not be involved. Their importance is normally
over-stressed by experimental psychologists under the
malign inﬂuence of the James-Lange theory of
emotions. (Contrast Oatley, and poets.)
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CONCLUSION: THE SCIENCE
Much of this is conjectural – many details still have
to be ﬁlled in and consequences developed (both of
which can come partly from building working models,
partly from multi-disciplinary empirical
investigations).
An architecture-based ontology can bring some
order into the morass of studies of affect (e.g. myriad
deﬁnitions of “emotion”).
C OMPARE THE RELATION BETWEEN THE PERIODIC TABLE
OF ELEMENTS AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF MATTER .
This can lead to a better approach to comparative
psychology, developmental psychology (the
architecture develops after birth), and effects of brain
damage and disease.
It will provide a conceptual framework for
discussing which kinds of emotions can arise in
software agents that lack the reactive mechanisms
required for controlling a physical body.
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CONCLUSION: HCI ENGINEERING
HCI Designers need to understand these issues:
(a) if they want to model human affective
processes,
(b) if they wish to design systems which engage
fruitfully with human affective
processes,
(c) if they wish to produce teaching/training
packages for would-be counsellors,
psychotherapists, psychologists.
For more details,see the Cognition and Affect
project papers
ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/
pub/groups/cog affect/0-INDEX.html
C OLLABORATORS ALWAYS WELCOME
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